


Thin, Thin Thread

by randomramblesff



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Community Appreciation Week 2017, Gen, a heck load of headcanons, also william winger is a piece of (insert swear), because i like to inflict pain onto my favourite characters, season 6, young!jeff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 14:50:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10721484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomramblesff/pseuds/randomramblesff
Summary: For #communityaw17 (Day 1 - Favourite Character): He’s not sure what leads him there, curiosity he supposes, but on a trip back from his mom’s house he decides to take a detour and drive through his old neighbourhood. (Set during S6, probably)





	Thin, Thin Thread

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write some reflective / teen!Jeff stuff for a while, so here's some sadness. I promise you, he is my favourite character... that's why I like to think about what he would have been like as a youngster. The title is from Maroon 5's "Sad". 
> 
> Probably my only fic/work for this week as I haven't had much time, but it's something, I guess.

He’s not sure what leads him there, curiosity he supposes, but on a trip back from his mom’s house he decides to take a detour and drive through his old neighbourhood. Well, their old neighbourhood where he grew up for the first eight years of his life. It’s just an old estate, built up in the fifties or sometime around then with most of the houses being one-floor or two-floor but the second one barely enough to really be called a floor in the first place with it just being a single attic room.

He's surprised he still knows his way around as it’s been so long. He mainly remembers it from the many times he’d ride around his hand-me-down bike, checking to see if anyone was home, just in case. Not that it feels like home or that it ever did after his dad left. Well, it did in some sense, the sense that is more magnetic than emotional. Just a knowing connection between yourself, memories and a place you’ve been many times before.

It feels the same. He’s not sure what has changed, maybe there are a couple of more shops in the area and maybe some of the older houses have been knocked down and replaced with newer ones but other than that, it’s the same dumping ground.

Their house was at the end of the street, one house down from the next corner that turned off onto another row of structurally similar houses, all with their neat but scrappy little front lawns with brown fences rather than white. He recognises a couple of the unchanged houses as where his school friends used to live, or at least, classmates used to live, all sporting newer cars out front and newly painted window frames.

It could still be the early eighties though if you threw a faded filter over the top. When he starts thinking about it and rolls up slowly to the front gate of the house – their house; his mom, his dad, their dog Rosie that used to sit on the front steps waiting for him to get back from school – it all hits him with much more nostalgia than he’d been expecting.

The door has changed which isn’t much of a surprise. It’d been peeling with green paint when they’d left, the corners scuffed and chipped with the wood showing through with splinters. Now it’s new with glossy oak and two glass panels at the side and a doorbell to one side.

He can’t see his bedroom window from the front. It was the bedroom at the furthest side of the house with one window facing a tree and the road and one window facing into the small patch of grass they called a garden. He likes to think it’s not as hard to look up at the building in front of him, knowing that whoever lives there now has reclaimed it and filled it with new meaning and new memories but he knows for a fact that even thinking of it will never be easy.

One of the first decisions his mom made when the divorce was in process was the decision to leave. He never really understood why she hadn’t left before; he was young, how could he? So, when she’d seemed so adamant he’d put up a fight for a while. He’d start crying every time she mentioned moving. He can even vaguely remember throwing his books and toys at walls just to see them break and tear so there would be nothing to pack away in the cardboard boxes she piled in his room.

He understands now, of course, and eventually in their new place he understood then too. She couldn’t get away but as soon as she had the chance she had to grab it for her own good. As much as he remembers all of this, he forgets it all too, how it must have been harder for her, his mom.

She was healing his wounds whilst hers were left wide open. It wasn’t easy financially either because perhaps that’s all his father had been good for. As soon as he’d left for good, the money had started to run short. Sure, his mom had received enough from the divorce to make sure they found a new home and were safe for a while but once he’d started growing older and had other needs, they’d only just been scraping through.

They even moved into a smaller place, just a bungalow with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen-diner. He remembers her telling him constantly in her low, somewhat comforting tone that it would get better. A kiss on the top of his head as she took his plate from the dining room table.

 _“It’ll get better Jeff, don’t you worry, okay?”_  
“It’ll get better, trust me, Jeffrey.”  
“Oh, it will get better in time.”  
“Just you wait, it’ll get better. Won’t it? It will get better.”

It had got better, eventually. He had uninterrupted sleep; he stopped waiting to hear if she was crying next door; he’d started indulging in what he’d missed out on. He’d claimed a living room chair as his own, he could kick a ball against the wall outside without worrying if he was going to get shouted out and he could laugh and spend time with his mom without having to think about when he was going to get told to stop. It was all small stuff really but it was a lot of small stuff adding up to one huge pile of endless small stuff that started to weigh down on him.

It’s why he grew up so quickly, it’s why he had to learn to be more independent and busy himself on his own time. That’s the one part that hadn’t got better. It’s the one thing that didn’t change and it’s another element of his childhood he’s only recently come to understand and appreciate.

He’d still been alone. Even more so because then it was just the two of them, and only him when his mom was at work every day, bringing in whatever funds she could pull together. He cried once; a full on, sobbing, wet-cheeked cry at the dinner table, his mom’s arms wrapped around him. He hadn’t _wanted_ to cry. He hadn’t _wanted_ her to know. It had been four years at this point. He was twelve and still mourning the loss of something he needed to get away from. Something and someone _they_ needed to get away from. _She_ needed to get away from.

 _“Jeffrey, you know you can talk to me, don’t you?”_  
“I’m fine.”  
“I know you, Jeffrey, you don’t have to hold it all in all the time.”  
“…Is it bad if I miss him?”  
“He’s your father, you have every right to miss him.”  
“But he left me!”  
  
It got worse from then on, the not talking to her part. He would have liked to have blamed it on growing up and hormones and not wanting to share anything with anybody because he was ‘just at that age’ but it wasn’t all because of that. The guilt of putting more weight on his mom’s shoulders meant he’d started to load it on himself instead. He’d stay quiet, he’d keep his head down and he’d do his best to not let it all come crashing down around him.

Except it did. Of course, it did. He distracted his suffering grades at school by trying his best to make up for it at home. That was one thing he’d prided himself on. It helped later on too when he left home and had to start fending for himself. He made his own lunches when his mom couldn’t; he made sure she had coffee and tea and he baked whatever kind of cake he could manage so she’d feel like she was being treated right for once.

He did a lot of stuff to try and prove himself and not just to her, either. There was always a voice in the back of his mind, nagging him, pushing him on. A voice which was familiar, _loud,_ rugged and demanding. He did it all for _him_ even if he never ended up seeing it. He wasted hours and opportunities and pressured himself into scenarios which were questionable but surely, if he did it all, one day _he_ might come back and see how much he’s done without him; done for him.

Once he’d cut his hair, some of that stuff came easier to him. Moving schools and changing his appearance opened his eyes up to how easy it was to try and fit into people’s ideals and moulds because believe it or not, being one of the tallest and lankiest boys in class weren't part of it. He couldn’t change his height but he could change how people saw him; strong and towering rather than weak and nimble.

It’s how he lost his virginity. Charlotte, her name was. They were in the basement of her house, on the couch with shaking hands and no idea where to start. He was perhaps a little too young and she was perhaps a little overly nervous to be making that kind of decision but it’s not like it meant anything. It was just the first time; the first time of endless times – that voice still nagging at him.

He liked to think he was one of the cool kids. Or at least, he fit in with the more popular people somewhat. He’d put on an act, using it as a distraction from that ever growing and ever present weight. His mom tells him now she’s glad he got to see the real him at home even if it didn’t last for long. He’s still not sure if he knows the real him. He’s so far from the Jeff Winger he envisioned back then. It’s like he’s being held down by an anchor; the anchor being the son who wouldn’t have gone on to be a lying disappointment or the son who as soon as he left home, was only good for paying bills when she needed it.

See, that’s the thing about leaving home. He did it just so he could get away from it all like it would leave all of the pain in the past. If he distanced himself from her too then maybe he wouldn’t always have to think about what happened. It wasn’t that he necessarily wanted to leave or that he could afford it, it just felt like the best option. And you know, the voice.

 _“Grow up Jeff, you’ll be the man of a house one day. Man up before it’s too late.”_  
“Quit your whining.”  
“When you leave this house nobody’s going to be there to save you.”  
“Oh yeah, cry all you want. Run off back to your mother.”

His voice isn’t there anymore, it’s all just a distant memory that stings when he thinks about it for too long. Even though he sees her more often now and even though she’s up to speed with his life and has been more forgiving than he would have ever have expected ( _“Jeffrey, you’ll never disappoint me. You had your reasons and that’s up to you to deal with but you’re still my son. I still love you.”_ ), he hasn’t broken down that barrier and started to talk through anything he should have talked through years ago.

He doesn’t ask if she still gets the nightmares she used to wake up with in hot sweats or if any of her scars has ever faded. He doesn’t ask if she still has her wedding ring tucked away (for some reason he always wondered where it went) or if she ever cared that he never changed his surname. He doesn’t ask anything at all because when he’s with her, it feels like yesterday again. It stings even harder so he can’t imagine what it must be like on the other side, having experienced worse. Having had to keep it all together.

Perhaps he should thank her. It’s not really a question. He knows he should. He knows that if he had the chance to go back, he’d thank her and be there in more than just pretending and in distractions. She’d tell him he was too young to have put all of the burdens on himself; that he wasn’t to blame. That it wasn’t his fault that he left. That it wasn’t his fault that he hurt her.

But when he looks up at the windows he can’t help but think he could have done so much more and that it’s too late to make up for it. It’s too late for everything now. Sitting in his car isn’t going to change anything. Maybe it would if he ever drove anywhere of importance; if he ever put what was inside of him to use.

Briefly, he envisions his younger self on the front lawn; drooping with his head down, a mop of long blonde hair on top of his head, rolling a ball between his feet. He looks up. He smiles. He’s hopeful.

He drives away and maybe there’s a tear in his eye but he’s okay with that; there’s nobody there to see. When the house is in his rear-view mirror, he speaks aloud.

“Rest in peace, Rosie.”


End file.
